Say you’re the pharaoh of a large company. (Just go with it—you get a fun headdress!) What if, instead of the team buzzing crazily to support your commands from the top of the pyramid, you helped to support their efforts from the base? That’s the idea of servant leadership, when servant leaders offer guidance and direction, while empowering employees to make their own decisions. At the base of servant leadership is trust that employees can do their jobs. Building on that trust, servant leaders look for opportunities to help their team members succeed. When done correctly, the flipped pyramid of servant leadership can have a powerful impact on a company’s culture.

In a culture when decisions come from the top of the pyramid, those decisions don’t always reflect the true state of things, or what the company really needs to move forward. That’s because, in our example, the pharaoh typically isn’t seeing how things look in the field, from building design, to materials acquisition, to the team placing the blocks. Under servant leadership, the pharaoh would say, “I enlisted you capable folks to build this pyramid, so you have my complete confidence. Can I invent the protractor to help you better measure your angles?” The workers are trusted to use their expertise to do their jobs, and when they need assistance, they can call on the resources, knowledge, and clout of their servant leader.

That doesn’t mean servant leaders get to lounge under the leaf fan until their services are needed. Servant leaders are busy! To best know how to serve, they have to be tapped in to the company and its employees. What work do the employees do? How do they do it? What will best help employees to succeed individually and as a team, and how can the servant leader bridge any gaps? What coaching, training, and feedback will best improve the team? What operations and industry information will keep the company competitive? Servant leadership requires a level of research, planning, and compassion that isn’t necessary in a “do it because I said so” leadership style.

So if you currently manage employees from the top of the pyramid, and you’d like to explore servant leadership, what changes can you make today? Start with a simple question: Ask your employees what would make their lives easier. What would they like to have? What would they like to get rid of? What’s working and what isn’t? Involve them; open a window on to their day-to-day lives. And then exercise your heroic manager-judgment to decide what operations, tools, and expertise will best support them. After all, they made you pharaoh for a reason!